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Anime Reviews

This is the Naruto I remember

There were times when I considered dropping Naruto.

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Anime Reviews

One Piece, or when the anime is better than the manga

Before I start, a preamble: One Piece is a great anime. Ever since our little agreement a month back I’ve been tackling the series, from 229 onwards at a pace of about 3 or so episodes a day. Unlike the other One Piece addict around here, however, I must admit the plot and characters aren’t the focus of the experience for me. Rather, I was interested in how One Piece transitioned from manga to anime, particularly in light of some of the other Shounen Jump adaptations that came out in the neighboring years.

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Anime Reviews

Opinions on current anime

Although the vast majority of my recent scribblings concern mostly older series, I am (and have been) keeping up with some newer anime, too.
Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu is a name that suggests parody, but this new fantasy series is surprisingly serious, with magic, monsters and adventure. 4 episodes in, it’s difficult to see whether or not it’ll follow through with its potential, but at least the characters are interesting. I picked this up because it’s referred to as Berserk-lite elsewhere and, indeed, it has a very Griffith esque destined-to-go-wrong personality in the smooth-talking, crazy ambitious Sion Astal. I’m holding out for some fascinating character arcs in the future, but it could fast devolve into light-hearted, generic monster-slashing too. Patience is the key, I guess.

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Anime Reviews

How the Cowboy Bebop ending explains the meaning of “You’re gonna carry that weight”

What is the Cowboy Bebop ending trying to say? It feels like such a waste! Spike doesn’t have to face Vicious, he could just stay with Faye and Jet, leave Mars and fly away, but he doesn’t.

No matter how many times it’s replayed, there will always be that choice hanging over Spike in the end, but then, isn’t that why Cowboy Bebop‘s still so fascinating? Consider Faye Valentine.

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Anime

The candy-colored afterlife

Occult Academy, you’ve made a fan out of me.

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Anime Editorials

The future of "anime" is bright

Let’s take this Dai Sato discussion for another spin, shall we?
The above image is from the film My Beautiful Girl Mari. It was released in 2001, and is being distributed in the US by ADV films. Moreover, you can stream it for free courtesy of the Anime News Network. It centers around a dream the protagonist has, as a young boy, while staring at a cat’s eye marble. The film is atomospheric, intense, visually pleasing in the extreme and experimental.
If you didn’t notice already, it’s also Korean.

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Anime Editorials

The future of anime (is bleak?)

If you haven’t already, I urge you to read this recent discussion with anime “storywriter” Dai Sato. He’s pissed off with the current state of anime and you should care because he created Eureka Seven and Ergo Proxy, as well as contributing to, amongst others, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Wolf’s Rain and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
Sato‘s complaints hone in on two separate areas, the first of which concerns how the production of anime is being increasingly out-sourced to cheap labour in neighbouring Asian countries, but more fascinating to me are his latter comments on the quality of story-telling in anime (or, indeed, the lack there-of.)

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Anime Reviews

Naruto & child soldiers / The thrilling tragedy of Kakashi Gaiden

Does Masashi Kishimoto think about how children are depicted in Naruto? Ninja are tools of war, after all, and Konoha trains its children to become ninja; isn’t that wrong? On a base, moral level? Of course, Naruto is intended as entertainment and, as such, there’s a certain amount of distance one feels between it and the real world, but to compare it to another boys-orientated action anime, like One Piece, reveals just how dark a world Kishimoto’s characters are born into, a place where children are trained to fight almost as soon as they can walk.

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Anime Reviews

Low-brow good times [Occult Academy first impressions]

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about anime over the past year, it’s that these Anime no Chikara projects start out strong, only to have me lose interest after four episodes.
When faced with the latest offering in the project, Occult Academy, I was determined not to be sucked in. I would watch it, but the cool-looking opening wouldn’t sway me, nor would the conversation with the cab driver in its opening minutes pique my interest. I was a woman not scorned, but bored – and I would not have it happen again. I sat on my throne of good taste, and prepared to get back to waxing poetic about The Tatami Galaxy.
Then the female lead decked her father’s corpse with a chair, wrestler-style, and all of a sudden, I was more than willing to give things a second chance.

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Anime Reviews

Get back to watching One Piece

One Piece. Oh, man. Where do I start.